So, Its my first post and here but i have been looking through some of the work done on this site already and I must say I am very impressed. I have acquired a copy of Maya 2009 and 3d studio mark 2009, and now I am looking for some advise on were I should start. I guess I ill go back a bit and give a bit of my background. Currently I work in an IT department i troubleshoot and repair POTS lines, ADSL/ADSL2+, VDSL/VDSL2+, line as well as troubleshoot or company's IPTV system. To be quite frank I'm getting quite sick of the line work and am looking for a change, so I thought I might look into doing 3d animation//modeling in hopes of gaining knowledge//experience to possibly change my career path. My question is fairly simply, I don't have much experience with 3d animation, I have done some work using adobe after effects and premier for video editing but I wanna learn the 3d animation world and need to know were I can start. Now a lot of people are going to say there are great school's out there for this kind of thing but, I don't have the time to dedicate my life to school, this is something that I will be doing over a period of time, doing most of it on my own. I guess if anyone knows other than the tutorials were i can find information on the basics of Maya using its shortcuts and learning the lingo even would be awesome. I hope there's someone out there who might be willing to share some knowledge with a fellow enthusiast